We're very excited to bring you news of yet another powerful new feature on plotaroute.com - Abbreviated Route Directions.

You can now create your very own custom list of abbreviations to be used when producing directions for your routes. Shorthand versions of common phrases can be set up, making directions easier to read and also better for display on small screens like cycle computers and other GPS devices.

PlotarouteJust now · We are very pleased to announce that you can now access our advanced Route Profile tool on mobile devices.

Until now it has only been possible to use our Route Profile tool on desktop computers, but the new mobile-friendly version now enables you to explore elevation profiles for your routes in great detail while away from your desk.

We've managed to replicate almost all the features available on the desktop version of this tool, but redesigned for a small screen. Find the highest point, the steepest section and the longest climb! Zoom in to sections of the route to examine them more closely. Rotate the screen into landscape format for a full-screen view of the profile. Add your own labels to the chart and download or share it for other people to see.

Today we've implemented changes to plotaroute.com to improve our support for a wider range of languages, including those with non-Latin alphabets.

While plotaroute.com is predominantly an English language website, it is used by people from over 190 countries across the world. However, until now support for foreign languages, in particular those with non-Latin alphabets like Cyrillic, has been rather patchy. This has sometimes resulted in information being displayed differently to how it was originally entered, because plotaroute.com was originally designed to support Latin alphabets only. The changes we've made should provide improved support for non-Latin alphabets.

Due to a sudden very large increase in the costs of using Google maps on our website, we have been forced to make a number of changes to plotaroute.com, to ensure that it continues to remain viable. This has included a large investment to bring the hosting of our main maps in-house and to redevelop core functionality.

The changes will not affect the way the site operates but we've replaced most of our Google maps features with open source alternatives to keep costs under control and avoid the need for passing on Google's huge price increases. The exception is our main desktop route planner, which will continue to use Google Maps technology for Premium members.

PlotarouteJust now · We're always looking at ways to make plotaroute.com as intuitive and easy to use as possible, so to make it easier to switch between different map types and layers in our desktop route planner, we've redesigned the Map Type and Map Layer selectors to display drop-down lists rather than a pop-up window.

We've also made one other change related to this which we hope you'll find useful - when you launch the route planner, it will now automatically select the Map Type you were last using (in the current browser).

It can often be useful to trace over sections of another route when planning a new one. We've now made our 'Trace a Route' feature more accessible by adding it to the navigation menus on plotaroute.com